Wednesday, February 12, 2014

"There's not a person in the world that could do this except for you. This is what you do. I've seen you do it with my own eyes. I believe in you. I believe in you with every cell of my being." -Tami Taylor (Coach's wife) in "Friday Night Lights" (Eyes Wide Open)

It was a dog on a motorcycle that caught Kathryn Chandler’s eyes. The guy with the dog was Kyle Chandler, star of CBS’ “Early Edition” (which is filmed in Chicago). But back in 1993, there was no “Early Edition.” And Kathryn hadn’t seen Kyle in any of his other roles. All she knew was that any man giving a big dog a ride on his motorcycle was a little eccentric. And she liked that.

“There’s a place in Los Angeles called Dog Park,” says Kathryn. “I would take my little terrier there, and sometimes I’d run into Kyle and his dog. So we would kind of smile at each other and do the triple take, but we wouldn’t really do anything about it. “Then one day I was there on one side of the park with my dog, and he was on the other side. No one else was there. So I said to (my dog) Otis`Go over and jump on that guy.’ And he did! He went over and just pounced on Kyle, who said, `Whoa, friendly dog you got here.’” The two didn’t go out until six months later. “I saw a moving van in front of his house, and I thought, `Ohmigod! It’s never going to happen!’ ” she remembers. “So I took my dog and slowly strolled by his house. I said, `Hey, are you moving?’ And he said his neighbors were.” Then he asked her out to a movie.

Which leads to the question: Why did it take so long for Kyle to ask Kathryn out? She is a former model with an outgoing personality. “I had lots of other girls to ask out first,” he teases. “He’s lying!” she says, laughing. Married since 1995, the couple live in Chicago with their daughter, Sydney. But she says she wants to write an independent film starring a certain shy guy who knows how to ride a mean motorcycle. And by the way, Kathryn still has the ticket stub from “Scent of a Woman” – the movie they went to on their first date. -Chicago Sun Times (Jae-Ha Kim, 1999)

“Welcome, guys” were the words Coach Gary Gaines used to begin the 1988 season. Gary Gaines was a strikingly handsome man with a soft smile and rows of pearly white teeth somehow unstained, as if by divine intervention, from the toxic-looking thumbfuls of tobacco snuff that he snuck between front lip and gum when his wife wasn’t around to catch him. He had beautiful eyes, not quite gray, not quite blue, filled with softness and reassurance. His message was short and sincere: “Nobody rest a play, men. Don’t coast on any play. You’re on that field, you give it everything you got.” They were players like Joe Bob Bizzell, the Golden Boy of golden boys, the one against whom all others were measured. Said one former classmate of him with dreamy reverence as he remembered Joe Bob’s place and time in high school in the early seventies, “You couldn’t touch ’im.” He had been All-State three years, making it as a sophomore, as a junior, and then both ways at receiver and defensive back as a senior. No one else at Permian had ever done that and no one had an instinct for the ball like Joe Bob Bizzell, something that rose beyond a rare gift, a natural talent, and had become a very part of him. “Before they even snapped the ball, I knew what play they were going to run,” he said. “It was weird, but that’s how it was done.” -"Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream" by H. G. Bissinger, H.G. (2004)

"An increasingly addictive noir set in the world of high school cheerleading." (Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman)

"I’m listening, but I don’t know what I’m hearing. I wonder how many beers Will has had, or if this is what mourning can look like, diffuse and mysterious. “Addy, I think…” He pauses, his beer bottle tilting in his hand. “She knew things I never told anyone,” he says. “Like about my wife. Six years we were together, I never bought her a Valentine’s Day card.” [...] “I felt sorry for Coach. And then when the Sarge died, I felt rotten. I thought maybe Beth used that picture in some evil way. And that Sarge killed himself on account of it. Is that what happened, Addy?”, Tacy says sighing."

"There is Beth at the diamond tip, her face streaked indigo and, from afar, never looking more like the savage princess she is. Seeing her, I feel all kinds of things I can’t name. Her face is so lovely, a perfect spritely smile carved there, lightning bolt tattoo streaked across one high cheekbone. It feels as if we’re on our knees, like prayerful Southern football players... We are all bowing inside, to her. Coach, you’ve not forsaken us. The quiet among us, the devotional silence starts to break apart as we feel ourselves lifted. But not me—me who wants to bathe in the moment’s sacredness forever. The gasp from the bleachers lashes through the air. The force with which she twists her body, spinning it, and then kicking backwards —and all our hands grabbing for her, and the will with which Beth pitches her body, legs kicking so far back. Then the sickening crack and seeing her head click backwards, like a doll’s. But you must see: She never really wanted anything but this." -"Dare Me" (2012) by Megan Abbott

Monday, February 10, 2014

-"It may have been wrapped in the arena of high school football, but it's really about mentoring, about people helping people." ~Kyle Chandler on Friday Night Lights

"Being a fair honest person is my best quality... and if I have a worst quality it is that I am indecisive when answering questions."

Mr. Chandler has brought to the role a mature sex appeal that is muted by a certain lugheadedness, portraying Coach Taylor as someone who doesn’t quite understand how it is that relationships have become so complicated, or why teenage girls don’t just want to dress like Pilgrims. Dialogue doesn’t coax him there. He conveys this all in his recurring look of dismay, one that suggests a man living on the outskirts of modernity but full of enough compassion to deal respectfully with the ones he loves when he’s overwhelmed. Mr. Chandler makes Taylor frustrating, kind, goofy, appealing, occasionally quick to temper and provocatively real. And amid all that, he’s found his own pulse. Source: www.nytimes.com

When Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton decided to drive from LA to Austin together to begin filming, producer Peter Berg was worried. “Connie and Kyle developed a very flirtatious, precocious relationship right off the bat. And Kyle, of course, is married,” he explained. “I was convinced they would be having some torrid affair by the time they reached Santa Fe and Kyle’s marriage would be over by the time they got to Austin. I was wrong about that, thank God.” Source: www.thefrisky.com

On FNL, Britton and Kyle Chandler, who portrayed her husband, Coach Eric Taylor, created what may be both the best and the most realistic marriage ever seen on TV. Tami and Eric were a team, and so, professionally, were Britton and Chandler. Several times the two caravanned together, she in her car and he on his motorcycle, making a road trip of the drive to Austin, Texas, where FNL filmed, from their homes in L.A.

“Kyle and I shared the same point of view on how we wanted that marriage portrayed,” says Britton. “We said early on, ‘Don’t even try to write one of us having an affair because we’re not going to do it. We want to portray what most people who live in small towns do: They get together, live together, have good days and bad days. They make it work.’ ” Source: www.more.com

"Listen honey, I don't know what to tell you," Britton told E! News' Kristin Dos Santos about the scrapped [FNL] movie. "At this point, I only have to defer to Pete Berg." But come on, Britton must have some form of blackmail to use on Berg, Chandler and the rest of the FNL gang in order to force them to gift the world with an FNL film, right?! "I have blackmail information on all of them," the Nashville star admitted. "I am just choosing the right moment to use it." Source: uk.eonline.com

Saturday, February 08, 2014

Reports at THR and Deadline have Sissy Spacek, Linda Cardellini, and Ben Mendelsohn (The Place Beyond the Pines) joining Friday Night Lights alum Kyle Chandler in a new untitled Netflix series, described as a psychological thriller. The 13-episode show comes from Damages creators Todd A. Kessler, Daniel Zelman, and Glenn Kessler and revolves around “a close-knit family of adult siblings whose secrets and scars are revealed when the black sheep oldest brother, Danny (Mendelsohn), returns home.”

Chandler and Cardellini will play the other siblings, and Spacek will play the family’s matriarch. This is a high-profile show not only because it marks the next effort from the Damages creators, but also because it’s Kyle Chandler’s return to television after the incredible Friday Night Lights.

Kyle Chandler has been one of the most in-demand actors in pilot season since FNL ended its run, and he shot a pilot about the Vatican, directed by Ridley Scott, that was not picked up by Showtime. Expect this new series to debut on Netflix late this year or early next year.Source: collider.com

“Guys are all about watches, boots, sunglasses, jackets. For us, simplicity is best.” -Kyle Chandler

"What I do is not rocket science, but I sure do love it." -Kyle Chandler

"I love playing a role where I think I’m right and then you learn you’re not. And it’s what you do with that information." -Kyle Chandler

“Every man at some point in his life is gonna lose a battle. He’s gonna fight, and he’s gonna lose. But what makes him a man is that in the midst of that battle, he does not lose himself. Success is not a goal, it is a by-product.” —Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler)

You can tell instantly why they picked Chandler to play the imperturbable Texas high school football coach on NBC's Friday Night Lights. Having spent much of his childhood in Georgia, Chandler has the Southern accent, but he also has the old-school values: Hard work is its own reward. Slow and steady wins the race. And, above all, never ever believe your own hype.

"I've been acting for 20 years, and I'm still under the radar, and that's fine," he says. "It lets me do what I really want, which is to be a good husband, a good father. I'm quite happy just plodding along." "I like to live simply," says Chandler. "My wife is my best friend. We don't go to parties. I believe kids are supposed to get dirty and have fun. When we have people over the house, I'll fire up the grill outside and we'll have good food, but it's potluck. I love what I do, but I don't need the lavish lifestyle that's supposed to go with it."

His first major television role was as a Cleveland Indians outfielder on Homefront, a critically acclaimed series about a group of WWII vets returning to Ohio.

Next came Early Edition, on which he played a man who mysteriously receives a copy of The Chicago Sun-Times one day in advance, giving him knowledge of the future. From there, Chandler became a kind of everyhunk with roles as testosterone-fueled as his characters' names suggest: Jake Evans (What About Joan), Grant Rashton (The Lyon's Den), Mac McGinty (Capital City), Bruce Baxter (King Kong).

Chandler met his wife at a dog park in the mid-'90s at the tail end of a sowing-oats phase. He had come to Hollywood several years earlier on a talent program for ABC after majoring in theater at the University of Georgia. Acting work was scarce at first, which gave Chandler--who is a strapping 6-foot-1--time for other pursuits. "My first job was as a bouncer at the Palace nightclub in Hollywood, and it gave me a lot of opportunities with women," he says, though he's above giving details. "Let's just say I was not suffering in that department."

But Kathryn took Kyle to a whole new level, literally. After breaking up and getting back together several times, he followed her on a climbing trip to Pico de Orizaba, an 18,000-foot peak in Mexico, where Kyle promptly got altitude sickness but was bowled over by an epiphany. "I know it sounds corny, but when we got back home, I bought a bottle of wine and some candles, went to her place, and told her I couldn't live without her." What's the secret of their lasting love in a town where divorces are as common as strip malls? "She knows who I really am and still appreciates me," says Chandler. "Here I have a new show, and for a minute you think, How can I reinvent myself? But success is attached to being who you are. My wife knows I'm a complete idiot, and she reminds me every day that success is meaningless if I'm pretending to be someone I'm not."

For Chandler, family is the great equalizer. "No matter what happens in other areas of my life, I get my soul and essence from them," he says. "Spending time with my girls clarifies my perspective on just about any problem. And if I'm still struggling with something, my wife and I will have one of our late-night conversations in bed, and that will put the problem to rest."

"Making the best of a bad situation is what life is about, because the frills and fancies, they just come and go." What would his dad think of the man Kyle is today? Chandler finishes his second pint and thinks about it a minute. It wouldn't be like him to sugarcoat the answer, and he doesn't: "I always think if Dad climbed up out of the grave, he'd look at me and say, 'Kyle, you son of a bitch, why don't you get a real job?' But then he would look at the business side and say, 'Okay, I get it now.'"

Chandler laughs, but you can tell the conversation has tapped something deep inside him. He puts his hands together and his head down, almost prayerlike, or as if he's about to deliver one of those inspirational speeches in the locker room on Friday Night Lights. But this one's for real. "My dad always said, 'Listen to that inner voice. It won't steer you wrong,'" he says. "The world tries to mess with you in all kinds of ways. If Dad were here today, I think he'd be proud of me for becoming my own man. I think that's all you can hope to accomplish in this life." Source: www.menshealth.com

Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Sarah Paulson are already signed on for Todd Haynes' drama Carol, and now they have a further co-star in Kyle Chandler.

He'll play Blanchett's husband in the Patricia Highsmith adaptation. As a novel, Carol was originally published as The Price Of Salt in 1952, with Highsmith (Strangers On A Train, The Talented Mr Ripley) writing pseudonymously as "Claire Morgan". The book's lesbian trappings prompted the secrecy: a positive and sympathetic portrayal of a sapphic relationship unusual in an era when such things were viewed as degenerate. Blanchett and Mara are, obviously enough, the couple at the heart of the film, with Chandler the other half of Blanchett's divorce proceedings. Source: www.empireonline.com

Monday, February 03, 2014

You remember the scene: hot-pink mini-dress, legs wide open, camera positioned just so. “Mommy is just so sick and tired of wearing panties,” purrs Robbie, proceeding to demonstrate this point with such resolve that her howling husband (Leonardo DiCaprio)—the loudest man in a movie full of loud men—is reduced to a whimpering bystander. It’s Robbie’s Basic Instinct moment, give or take some flesh-­colored underwear and a nanny cam. And it’s the scene that may turn a 23-year-old Australian actress with exactly one previous major film credit (Richard Curtis’s About Time) and one canceled TV show (Pan Am) into a brand name.

Robbie was still under contract on Pan Am, ABC’s 2011 drama about sixties flight-attendants-slash-spies, when the Wolf of Wall Street script—based on convicted financial scammer Jordan Belfort’s memoir of the same title —went out to every unknown actress in Hollywood. Robbie was initially uninterested. “I said, ‘If I was a dude, I’d wanna be in this, but I’ve got no interest in playing a gold-digger mistress.’ And my managers said, ‘Okay, Margot, that’s great, but it’s a Scorsese film. We’re obviously not expecting you to get this role.’

In the end, it was Robbie who convinced Scorsese that she should parade around topless. “He was the one saying, ‘Technically, for this sex scene she could have kept her bra on.’ But the first thing Naomi would do is get naked. That’s how she’s gonna win the fight.” Robbie learned to appreciate the character’s competitive instincts. “She figured out the one power that she has, and she uses it over the douchebags of the world. If I need to be painted as the bitch, paint me as the bitch, because you need to be on his side at the end of the day.” Source: www.vulture.com

Featuring in full-frontal nude scenes, Robbie confessed to downing tequila shots on the set of the fast-paced flick to help her lose her inhibitions before stripping down. Her raunchy performance alongside Hollywood veteran Leonardo DiCaprio recently attracted the attention of Playboy publisher, Hugh Hefner who despite not knowing her name, told Us Weekly he was impressed with her nude scenes. 'The girl that plays [Jordan Belfort's] wife in [Wolf of Wall Street] is very, very pretty.'

'We're ready for her. She would be great.' The former Neighbours star has had a busy past few months, recently wrapping up her latest film Focus, where she stars opposite Will Smith, as well as war-time romance Suite Francaise. Robbie is currently preparing to appear in science fiction film Z for Zachariah alongside Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor, for which she has already darkened her blonde locks. The Aussie beauty is also rumoured to be starring in the hotly anticipated film Tarzan.

The Wolf Of Wall Street was released in Australia two weeks ago and is already a box office smash, grossing more than $1 million on its opening day - the biggest ever for a Martin Scorsese film. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Sunday, February 02, 2014

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara now have a third wheel in Carol. Hot off snagging the lead in Netflix‘s upcoming psychological thriller from the Damages creators,

Kyle Chandler has now also joined the Todd Haynes-directed film. Picked up by the Weinstein Company in Cannes last year, Carol chronicles the burgeoning and tempestuous relationship between two very different women in 1950s NYC. Oscar winner Blanchett plays the older of the two, a wife trapped in a dead marriage who’s desperate to leave but also fears losing her daughter if she does.

Friday Night Lights alum Chandler, who can currently be seen in The Wolf Of Wall Street, plays Harge, the Blanchett character’s jealous husband. Filming is scheduled to start in mid-March on the Phyllis Nagy penned adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley author Patricia Highsmith’s novella The Price Of Salt. Sarah Paulson also stars in the film. Chandler is repped by Gersh and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Source: www.deadline.com

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Although the movement was named by the French, film noir has always been an American genre. But as the 12th San Francisco Film Noir Festival shows, the bitterness of American crime films of the 1940s found some kindred spirits in Europe and in Asia - places that had been ravaged by World War II. "In many cases you are watching bleak, dark, cynical movies made by people working directly in the aftermath of the war," said Noir City director Eddie Muller. "If you think Hollywood noirs are about postwar cynicism and nihilism, wait till you see movies made by the countries that lost the war."

"It's eye-opening. You realize how fortunate America has been in that the war wasn't fought on our soil. When you look at 'Stray Dog' and 'Drunken Angel' (showing Sunday, filmed on the streets of Tokyo by Akira Kurosawa), you're looking at the losers of the war literally living in atomic fallout. Despite its foreign flavor - 16 of the 27 films are in a foreign language with English subtitles - there is an unmistakably American noir angst: gangsters (Britain's "Brighton Rock," starring Richard Attenborough, screening Wednesday), meticulously planned heists (France's "Rififi," Feb. 1), and even the deliciously titled "Never Open That Door" (next Thursday), a 1952 Argentine film based on the work of American crime author Cornell Woolrich ("Rear Window"). Source: www.sfgate.com

"Fatalism in American Film Noir," by University of Chicago professor and Hegel scholar Robert B. Pippin, constitutes (perhaps for the first time) a philosopher’s take on the genre. It centers in particular on agency, i.e., the extent to which all of us (and particularly film noir protagonists) are agents of their own actions. It’s hard to deny that noir protagonists exhibit a certain helplessness—as though their actions, or the motivation to act, are derived from outside themselves, whether the result of fate, obsession, or various socioeconomic factors.

Pippin cites Burt Lancaster in Criss Cross (1949) and The Killers (1946) as demonstrating this passive tendency, immobilized by his belief that he’s been dealt a hand over which he has little, if any, control. It is no coincidence that the question of agency, and film noir, came together at a particular moment in history. According to Pippin, these films show us “what it literally looks like, what it feels like, to live in a world where the experience of our own agency has begun to shift.” Pippin focuses on three works: Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947); Orson Welles’s The Lady From Shanghai (1948); and Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street (1945).

Pippin points that in Out of the Past, we are shown events and, through flashbacks and a voice-over, we are told about those events. Consequently, there’s a gap between what we see happening and what Jeff Bailey, as he narrates the story in order to explain himself to Ann, maintains is happening.

Jeff is unable to move out of the past (in this case his relationship with femme fatale Kathie) due to his belief that—here Pippin quotes Oedipus—”I suffered those deeds more than I acted them.” Of course, Jeff and fellows like him aren’t thinkers, but improvisers who move from one event to another, trying to create a space for themselves in which to act, only to be stymied by their past. Trapped by what he does and who he is, Jeff seeks to become the agent of his actions, only to meet his death. Any room for self-generated action is limited, though the heroic-existential position is to act despite everything. As Pippin notes: “He ends up an agent, however restricted and compromised, in the only way one can be. He acts like one.” And then he dies.

Analyzing Scarlet Street, Pippin notes how Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) seeks to break out of his own self-inscribed world, even relating it to the film’s final music, which morphs from a Christmas tune to Melancholy Baby—heard earlier when the needle becomes stuck (a metaphor for Chris’s life) to Jingle Bells. It’s as though Lang is counterposing the socioeconomic facts of Chris’s life with the Christian account of fate and redemption. Trapped by class and the limits of their self-understanding, these characters seem to embrace a narrowing of their future course of action.

“I had no choice” is the excuse they seek to employ. But these characters are neither free nor fated. They make choices, even if they are trapped by them. Says Pippin, “The danger of exaggerating our capacity for self-initiated action and so exaggerating both a burden of responsibility and a way of avoiding a good deal of blame is...as great as the danger of throwing up our hands and in a self-undermining way becoming the all-pervasive power of fate.”

Pippin concludes with a brief look at Double Indemnity (1944), in which egoist/predator Phyllis Dietrichson conspires with easy-going nihilist Walter Neff. But Pippin notes that it’s Barton Keyes who, as arbiter, defines the boundaries separating accident, fate, and intentionality. As a Socratic figure, Keyes doesn’t condemn Neff, but recognizes that he’s trapped. Since it’s Keyes’ job to realize such things, he, according to Pippin, must bear the burden of the narrative. In the closing moments of Double Indemnity, Phyllis suffers her fate because she finally acts as a free agent, choosing not to shoot Neff a second time, which leads to her death. Despite the fact that noir is often couched in nihilistic terms, there’s actually something heartening in reading an author who suggests that shared knowledge might ultimately lead to self-knowledge, and that ethics matter whether we are free agents or not. —Woody Haut for 'Noir City' magazine vol. 8 No. 2 (Fall 2013)

Based in 1940s Los Angeles, where a battle is raging between the gangs and the police, the story centres on Jon Bernthal's detective Joe Teague. Bernthal fits the bill as the mysterious lead who keeps his cards so close to his chest, we're still not entirely sure where he sits in the crime divide. Noir-lovers will get a thrill from Mob City, but it currently feels like it's lacking ambition when compared to its contemporary rivals. Source: www.digitalspy.co.uk

Los Angeles was "Mob City" in the 1940s, as the title of a new TV miniseries puts it. The second pair of episodes of the TNT crime show air tonight, continuing to track the real-life era of Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, and a deeply corrupt LAPD. "Mob City" is based on the 2010 book "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City" by John Buntin. I reached Buntin in Nashville, where he lives with his family, and asked him to describe how organized crime and corruption came to dominate the City of Angels. Source: www.csmonitor.com

Siegel had never built a large establishment before, and it showed. The original budget for the new casino was $1.2 million. Siegel spent a million on plumbing alone. By the time the Flamingo opened on December 26, 1946, Siegel and his investors—who included the top leadership of the Syndicate—had plowed more than $5 million into the project. Rumors of outrageously expensive design changes started to spread. Some Syndicate chieftains became concerned that Bugsy’s new girlfriend, Mob moll Virginia Hill was stashing their money in Swiss bank accounts. Bugsy knew the boys could get tough. When he flew into Los Angeles early on the morning of June 20, 1947, violence was on his mind. After catching a few hours of sleep at the Beverly Hills mansion that Virginia Hill was renting (from Rudolph Valentino’s former manager), Bugsy headed over to associate Al Smiley’s apartment, where he met with Mickey Cohen.

On a typical workday, some 260,000 cars jammed downtown Los Angeles, making the intersection of Adams and Figueroa on the edge of downtown the busiest in the world, with more than double the traffic of its nearest rival, Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Los Angeles also had one of the most extensive streetcar networks in the country. Together, the intraurban Yellow and interurban Red lines provided service over more than a thousand miles of rail and transported an average of 520,000 people into the downtown area every day. Total number of passenger trips in 1924: 110,000,000. “All of the talk was ‘boom,’ ‘dollars,’ ‘greatest in the world,’ ‘sure to double in price,’” marveled the author Hamlin Garland, who visited L.A. in 1923. High in the Hollywood Hills, a giant sign, each letter fifty feet tall and covered with four thousand lightbulbs, promoted one of Harry Chandler’s new developments, “Hollywoodland!” The “-land” later fell over, and the sign became the new city’s most distinctive symbol. -"L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City" by John Buntin